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ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill Berkowitz FreedomWorks Challenges Progressive OrganizationsCitizens for a Sound Economy merges with Empower America to form new organizationWill the newly established conservative organization, stocked with old-line right wing warriors, impact Election 2004?Will it be just another right wing group with fancy Washington, D.C. digs and handsomely designed stationary or will it challenge MoveOn.org and other liberal grassroots organizations that have mobilized progressive activists over the past two years? Will it recruit conservative activists in the battleground states or is it another high-profile venture for tired right wind culture warriors? Stealing a page from MoveOn.org's successful organizing playbook, the leaders of FreedomWorks - a complete merger of the conservative think-tanks Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) and Empower America - hope to conduct massive get out the vote and political education campaigns in the swing states on behalf of President George W. Bush. The two groups decided to merge because there was "an overlap in issues between the two organization," Shawn Small, the Director of Policy at Empower America, told me in a telephone interview. It was an opportunity to bring together Empower America, which Small characterized as a "grasstops" organization driven by such inside the beltway "superstars" as William Bennett, Vin Weber and Jean Kirkpatrick and CSE's "grassroots" following. Will FreedomWorks be successful? Maybe, maybe not, but it is sure to be controversial with longtime Republican Party operative Matt Kibbe at the helm. If the agenda of FreedomWorks sounds familiar, that's because it is. The organization's new website proclaims that it "will expand and broaden the national fight for lower taxes, less government, and more economic freedom." The leaders of FreedomWorks have all been around the Beltway a number of times. Former House Majority Leader, Texas Republican congressman Dick Armey, C. Boyden Gray, onetime legal counsel to Bush's father and chairman of the Committee for Justice, an organization about to launch a campaign on behalf of Bush's right wing judicial appointees, and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary and failed vice-presidential candidate, Jack Kemp, will serve as the Co-Chairmen of the organization. William Bennett, America's self-appointed culture maven/heavy-duty gambler, co-founder of the education company K12, Inc., and Cabinet official in several previous Republican administrations will be FreedomWorks Senior Fellow in charge of pushing school vouchers. In March 2002, Bennett appeared at the National Press Club and announced the formation of Americans for Victory Over Terrorism (AVOT), an organization he said was dedicated to "tak[ing] to task those groups and individuals who fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the war we are facing." Despite its high-profile launch, AVOT appears to have been neglected in nearly a year: According to Empower America's Small, Bennett, who "spearheaded" AVOT has gotten involved with "his daily radio talk show," and hasn't had the time to put into the organization. Bill Bennett's Morning in America is syndicated by the Salem Radio Network, a division of Salem Communications Corporation. The last AVOT press release entered on its web site is dated September 9, 2003. At the Washington, D.C. press conference announcing the launch of FreedomWorks, Matt Kibbe - who was President and CEO of Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) since June of this year - was introduced as FreedomWorks' new President and CEO. According to Kibbe the organization will be "a new and powerful answer to the challenge presented by the Left and groups like America Coming Together (ACT), MoveOn.org, and the Media Fund. Our mission is no less ambitious than fundamentally changing the way our government operates. We're going to create what President Bush calls an 'ownership society' built on freedom and individual empowerment, and we are going to accomplish it through broad citizen action." Kibbe, who once worked for Lee Atwater, the late Republican Party National Chairman and legendary dirty trickster, has been spearheading CSE's campaign to get independent presidential candidate, Ralph Nader, on the ballot in Oregon - one of the swing states. "There are about 30,000 Oregon CSE members. We called about 1,000 folks in the Portland area and said this would be an opportunity to show up and provide clarity in the presidential debate," Kibbe said recently. "We believe that hard work beats daddy's money," former Congressman Dick Armey said at the press conference. "MoveOn is doing all kinds of high-profile, big-dollar deals with money from George Soros and other rich Democrats. "We can match that with people on the street who really care about Social Security retirement accounts, tax simplification, smaller government and freedom from frivolous lawsuits," Armey added. Foreshadowing the possible domestic agenda of a second Dubya term, FreedomWorks' co-chairmen, citing the success of Reagan Revolution, laid out its "Contract with America" (redux?) with a "bold" agenda of "big ideas" in a July 22 letter to its constituents:
Although Bennett has been an outspoken culture warrior, CSE and Empower America have not taken positions on such social issues as abortion rights and same-sex marriage, Small said. FreedomWorks claims a membership of over 360,000 and a multi-tentacled legal structure that includes a 501 c(3), a 501 c(4), a 527, a federal PAC, and various state PACs. John Stauber, co-author of Banana Republicans: How The Right Wing is Turning America into a One-Party State, recently pointed out that that according to internal documents leaked to the Washington Post in January 2000, the bulk of Citizens for a Sound Economy's revenues ($15.5 million in 1998) came not from its members, but from contributions of $250,000 and up from large corporations, including Allied Signal, Archer Daniels Midland, DaimlerChrysler, Emerson Electric Company, Enron, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Philip Morris and U.S. West (now Qwest). The organization also maintains that it has "full-time campaign staff on the ground" in the electoral battleground states of Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin, and that it has "a sophisticated conservative political database containing over 600,000 activist names in all 50 states." The fact that FreedomWorks looks towards MoveOn.org and other dynamic progressive groups as examples of organizations successfully getting its message out is an interesting twist of history. More than 30 years ago conservative ideologues like Paul Weyrich, Howard Phillips, and others made a point of monitoring and tracking the left because they were both impressed by its organizing strategies and chagrined by its successes. For the next three decades, conservatives took organizing to a new level; creating an infrastructure of right wing think tanks, public policy institutes, media outlets, and leadership training centers. A "New Right" - an amalgam of religious and secular organizations - developed and succeeded in pushing a hardcore right wing political and social agenda. That movement grew into the political apparatus that has dominated political discourse in this country over the past two-plus decades. During the New Right's hegemony, progressives watched and whined as conservative foundations and philanthropists gave time, energy, and money to build their movement. Now, in an unexpected turn of the worm, it appears veteran right wingers are once again looking to progressive organizations for effective grassroots organizing models. sign in, or register to email stories or comment on them.
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MORE ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill Berkowitz PERC receives Templeton Freedom Award for promoting 'enviropreneurs'Right Wing foundation-funded anti-environmental think tank grabbing a wider audience for 'free market environmentalism' On the 15th anniversary of Terry Anderson and Donald Leal's book "Free Market Environmentalism" -- the seminal book on the subject -- Anderson, the Executive Director of the Bozeman, Montana-based Property and Environment Research Center (PERC - formerly known as the Political Economy Research Center) spoke in late-January at an event sponsored by Squaw Valley Institute at the Resort at Squaw Creek in California. While it may have been just another opportunity to speak on "free market environmentalism" and not the kickoff of a "victory tour," nevertheless it comes at a time when PERC's ideas are taking root.
Bill Berkowitz Neil Bush of Saudi ArabiaDuring recent visit, President’s brother describes the country as a 'kind of tribal democracy' In late February, only a few days after Saudi Arabia beheaded four Sri Lankan robbers and then left their headless bodies on public display in the capital of Riyadh, Neil Bush, for the fourth time in the past six years, showed up for the country's Jeddah Economic Forum. The Guardian reported that Human Rights Watch "said the four men had no lawyers during their trial and sentencing, and were denied other basic legal rights." In an interview with Arab News, the Saudi English language paper, Bush described the country as "a kind of tribal democracy."
Bill Berkowitz Newt Gingrich's back door to the White HouseAmerican Enterprise Institute "Scholar" and former House Speaker blames media for poll showing 64 percent of the American people wouldn't vote for him under any circumstances Whatever it is that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has come to represent in American politics, the guy is nothing less than fascinating. One day he's espousing populist rhetoric about the need to cut the costs of college tuition and the next day he's talking World War III. One day he's claiming that the "war on terror" may force the abridgement of fundamental first amendment rights and the next he's advancing a twenty-first century version of his Contract with America. At the same time he's publicly proclaiming how "stupid" it is that the race for the presidency has already started you know that he's trying to figure out how to out finesse Rudy, McCain and Romney for the nomination. And last week, when Fox News' Chris Wallace cited a poll showing that 64 percent of the public would never vote for him, he was quick to blame those results on how unfairly he was treated by the mainstream media back in the day.
Bill Berkowitz American Enterprise Institute takes lead in agitating against IranDespite wrongheaded predictions about the war on Iraq, neocons are on the frontlines advocating military conflict with Iran After doing such a bang up job with their advice and predictions about the outcome of the war on Iraq, would it surprise you to learn that America's neoconservatives are still in business? While at this time we are not yet seeing the same intense neocon invasion of our living rooms -- via cable television's news networks -- that we saw during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, nevertheless, a host of policy analysts at conservative think tanks -- most notably the American Enterprise Institute -- are being heeded on Iran by those who count - folks inside the Bush Administration.
Bill Berkowitz After six years, opposition gaining on George W. Bush's Faith Based InitiativeUnmentioned in the president's State of the Union speech, the program nevertheless continues to recruit religious participants and hand out taxpayer money to religious groups With several domestic policy proposals unceremoniously folded into President Bush's recent State of the Union address, two pretty significant items failed to make the cut. Despite the president's egregiously tardy response to the event itself, it was nevertheless surprising that he didn't even mention Hurricane Katrina: He didn't offer up a progress report, words of hope to the victims, or come up with a proposal for moving the sluggish rebuilding effort forward. There were no "armies of compassion" ready to be unleashed, although it should be said that many in the religious community responded to the disaster much quicker than the Bush Administration. In the State of the Union address, however, there was no "compassionate conservatism" for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Bill Berkowitz Frank Luntz calls Republican leadership in Washington 'One giant whining windbag'On the outs with the GOP, legendary degrader of discourse is moving to California He doesn't make great art; nothing he does elevates the human spirit; he doesn't illuminate, he bamboozles. He has become expert in subterfuge, hidden meanings, word play and manipulation. Frank Luntz has been so good at what he does that those paying close attention gave it its own name: "Luntzspeak."
Bill Berkowitz Spooked by MoveOn.org, conservative movement seeks to emulate liberal powerhouseFueled with Silicon Valley money, TheVanguard.org will have Richard Poe, former editor of David Horowitz's FrontPage magazine as its editorial and creative director As Paul Weyrich, a founding father of the modern conservative movement and still a prominent actor in it, likes to say, he learned a great deal about movement building by closely observing what liberals were up to in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Bill Berkowitz Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action jihadFounder and Chair of the American Civil Rights Institute scouting five to nine states for new anti-affirmative action initiatives Fresh from his most recent victory -- in Michigan this past November -- Ward Connerly, the Black California-based maven of anti-affirmative action initiatives, appears to be preparing to take his jihad on the road. According to a mid-December report in the San Francisco Chronicle, Connerly said that he was "exploring moves into nine other states."
Bill Berkowitz Tom Tancredo's missionThe Republican congressman from Colorado will try to woo GOP voters with anti-immigration rhetoric and a boatload of Christian right politics These days, probably the most recognizable name in anti-immigration politics is Colorado Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo. Over the past year, Tancredo has gone from a little known congressman to a highly visible anti-immigration spokesperson. "Tancredo has thoroughly enmeshed himself in the anti-immigration movement and with the help of CNN talk show host Lou Dobbs, he has been given a national megaphone," Devin Burghart, the program director of the Building Democracy Initiative at the Center for New Community, a Chicago-based civil rights group, told Media Transparency.
Bill Berkowitz Institute on Religion and Democracy slams 'Leftist' National Council of ChurchesNew report from conservative foundation-funded IRD charges the NCC with being a political surrogate for MoveOn.org, People for the American Way and other liberal organizations If you prefer your religious battles sprinkled with demagoguery, sanctimoniousness, and simplistic attacks, the Institute on Religion and Democracy's (IRD) latest broadside against the National Council of Churches (NCC) certainly fits the bill.
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